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Great 2012 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

December 4, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of my favorite articles from 2012. (A couple of pieces from December 2011 are included since I do these lists before the absolute end of the year.) All ungated and free.

  • “Pedestrian Mania” (Brian Phillips, Grantland): Beautiful piece about world-famous 1870s long-distance walking champion Edward Payson Weston, subject of the book, A Man in a Hurry.
  • “Brains Plus Brawn” (Daniel Lieberman, Edge) Incredibly fun article about endurance, which points out, among many other things, that as quick as Usain Bolt may seem, your average sheep or goat can run twice as fast.
  • “A New Birth of Reason” (Susan Jacoby, The American Scholar): Great essay about Robert Ingersoll, the largely forgotten secularist who was a major force in 19th-century America, taken from the writer’s forthcoming book, The Great Agnostic.
  • “One’s a Crowd” (Eric Kleinberg, The New York Times): Great Op-Ed piece about the increasing number of people living alone.
  • “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” (Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times): A deep and penetrating explanation of the complicated forces at play in job outsourcing.
  • “The Power of Habit“ (Charles Duhigg, Slate): An excerpt from the author’s bestseller of the same name which explains how Pepsodent became omnipresent.
  • “We’re Underestimating the Risk of Extinction” (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic): I didn’t necessarily agree with the premise (or conclusions) of this interview with philosopher Nick Bostrom, but I enjoyed its intelligence immensely.
  • “Hustling the Cloud” (Steven Boone, Capital New York): Wonderful piece about a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night search for free Wi-Fi–and anything else that would seem to make sense–in a time of dire economic straits.
  • “Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World” (Wil S. Hylton, The New York Times Magazine): Fascinating examination of the titular biologist, who wants to make breathing bots that will cure the world’s ills.
  • “The Machine and the Ghost” (Christine Rosen, The New Republic): The author riffs on how the rise of smart, quantified gizmos and cities necessitates a new “morality of things.”

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“We’re At A Cultural Crossroads, Those Of Us Who Live In Countries Where iPhones And Social Media Mean Something”

November 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

I can’t say that I’ve been the biggest fan of Leos Carax’s films, but my smart little brother Steven Boone has an article in Capital New York about the director’s latest work, the fantasy drama Holy Motors, which has convinced me I need to catch up on it. Boone draws comparison between Carax’s take on the oft-brutal changes of our technological revolution with Chaplin’s meditation on the hardships the Industrial Revolution wrought a century ago. An excerpt:

“We’re at a cultural crossroads, those of us who live in countries where iPhones and social media mean something. We’re leaving behind a whole range of physical products forever, in favor of ones that exist only as data or abstractions. We’re crossing these precarious bridges on faith, or just resignation to the tools set before us as we scramble to survive.

What are we losing in the transfer? In Holy Motors, glimpses of ancient Etienne-Jules Marey motion photography and still-stunning Edith Scob (star of the 1960 French classic Eyes without a Face) as Lavant’s limo driver, seem to cry for continuity with the past.

Now that whole archives are trusted to ‘the Cloud,’ there’s as much risk of losing it all as there is promise in the way digital media smuggle history over to the very demographic that mega-corporations prefer to remain unawares, the youth. (Go to YouTube and witness all the awed teenagers commenting under classic silent movies.)  Carax is thinking about all that stuff in Holy Motors, pitting Lavant’s Lon Chaney makeup kit and costumes and absurdly luxurious limo against a world that suddenly moves faster than any vehicle, silently, invisibly, through data cables and air waves.”

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“Stragglers Still Hoping For An Immersive Experience At The Multiplex Were Suckers And Masochists”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

My little brother, that provocateur Steven Boone, summing up the loud, jarring, cynical last decade of multiplex fare in a recent article at Capital New York:

“The video game industry is currently in a war that the movie industry fought and decided last decade. It’s a struggle between loud, assaultive, photorealistic game design that rewards wispy attention spans while demanding minimal problem-solving skills of its players and … games where shotguns to the face and chainsaws to the jugular are not so essential.  

The American film industry settled on high-resolution ultraviolence as the default multiplex experience sometime after 9/11 and sometime before its superheroic screen response, The Dark Knight. The violence is not necessarily a matter of content but of the graceless way shots jam up against one another now, keeping us invested through a constant state of agitation where narrative suspense used to do the trick.  

During that decade, many viewers retreated from mainstream blockbuster cinema into the bosom of what critics call a television renaissance. So many smart, adult, spellbinding, hilarious TV shows, the story goes. Any stragglers still hoping for an immersive experience at the multiplex were suckers and masochists.”

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From “Fuck You Productions”:

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15 Great 2012 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

June 19, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of my favorite articles from the first half of 2012. All available for free.

  • “How to Survive the End of the Universe,” (Andrew Grant, Discover): Fascinating account of how humans can escape oblivion as our solar system changes over the next few billion years.
  • “Was Frankenstein Really About Childbirth?“ (Ruth Franklin, The New Republic): Provocative piece that makes a strong case that the dread of childbirth was a major impetus for Mary Shelley’s classic.
  • “One’s a Crowd” (Eric Kleinberg, The New York Times): Great Op-Ed piece about the increasing number of people living alone.
  • “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” (Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times): A deep and penetrating explanation of the complicated forces at play in job outsourcing.
  • “The Power of Habit“ (Charles Duhigg, Slate): An excerpt from the author’s bestseller of the same name which explains how Pepsodent became omnipresent.
  • “We’re Underestimating the Risk of Extinction” (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic): I didn’t necessarily agree with the premise (or conclusions) of this interview with philosopher Nick Bostrom, but I enjoyed its intelligence immensely.
  • “Hustling the Cloud” (Steven Boone, Capital New York): Wonderful piece about a bleary-eyed, middle-of-the-night search for free Wi-Fi–and anything else that would seem to make sense–in a time of dire economic straits.
  • “Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World” (Wil S. Hylton, The New York Times Magazine): Fascinating examination of the titular biologist, who wants to make breathing bots that will cure the world’s ills.

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“I’ve Spent My Entire Career Watching White Office Folks Bicker, Fight, Backstab, Love, Hate, Succeed And Fail”

June 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I’m always disconcerted when I read Nielsen breakdowns of the viewing habits of white and black Americans, and see how little crossover there is, though, of course, I understand the reasons. It reminds that something can seem incredibly brilliant to a certain group of people but not to another because the social context and experience we bring to a work of art is often as important as the art itself. From “The Very White Poetry of Mad Men” at Capital from my excellent old pal Steven Boone:

“It would be interesting to see what Quentin Tarantino, a product of multi-ethnic working class neighborhoods in L.A., would do behind the camera on a Mad Men episode. His punk history lessonInglourious Basterds revels in ‘mistakes’ (starting with the title) and the perseverance of life’s D-students in a world of letter-perfect sociopaths-in-power. What mischief, what banana peels would Q.T. set in Don Draper’s path?

What approach would we see from filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr., who actually worked in the real-life New York ad agency milieu in the 1960s, funneling these experiences into the anarchic Putney Swope (1969)? In Swope, militant blacks take over a swank agency, a one-joke premise crawling with cobwebs by now, sure, but one which still packs a punch in the stubbornly segregated Bloomberg-era Manhattan.

Mad Men, which so far has given a few lines to a black maid, a black girlfriend and, in the latest season, a black secretary, actually does resonate in that way: In any of the ‘good jobs’ I held in Manhattan across 20 years, I was either the sole black person or one of two black people in the office. A smattering of Asians or Hispanics completed the rainbow.

But that may also be the reason I had such a hard time finding black professionals to talk to who watch Mad Men.

One black computer programmer who requested anonymity was candid about why he doesn’t: ‘Mad Men isn’t for me…. I don’t know any black people who watch the show. I know they’re out there, but I’ve never met any of them.’

The programmer was quick to add that it’s not because of the low melanin content, but because it’s too familiar.

‘It’s not necessary for me to need a black or minority character to enjoy a movie or show, but Mad Men is just so appropriately shiny and false,’ he said. ‘It reminded me a lot of dealing with the sales people I’ve dealt with over the years as a software developer. I’ve worked in offices for 25 years now, and I’ve been the only Negro in my different office departments more years than I’ll admit. It’s that way right now, in fact.

‘Programmers don’t come in our shade unless they’re from India. Until the 2000’s, I didn’t see many minorities of any stripe in high positions at places I worked. So for me, I’ve spent my entire career watching white office folks bicker, fight, backstab, love, hate, succeed and fail, all the while doing little to involve somebody like me. So why the fuck would I want to watch this on TV?'”

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Faux ad from Putney Swope, 1969: “It started last weekend / At the Yale-Howard game.”

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“This Was The Future A Lot Of Dystopian Sci-Fi Authors Warned Us About”

March 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Excellent article at Capital by my old pal Steven Boone, in which he does the Wi-Fi shuffle, scamming free connectivity wherever he can and summing up our somnambulant, searching age. An excerpt: 

“Back home I had run into many such late-night nerd-drifters at the Apple store on 58th Street. An angry young black British writer had tipped me to the glories of 24-hour Apple joints one night, when we both found ourselves kicked out of the Grand Central Terminal wifi hotspot at closing time. 

58th Street was a revelation. So this was where all the weirdoes who used to fill the early-2000’s Internet cafe on Times Square had migrated.

Under the supervision of highly tolerant Apple store Geniuses, folks could play with the latest MacBooks, iPods, Shuffles, Airs, iPhones, and iMacs (iPads were still a few months off) for as long as they could stand or lean at the waist-level display tables. Others who brought their own devices siphoned wifi while sitting on the stone bench encircling the store’s Logan’s Run-looking glass elevator.

My favorite stand-up regular was a wild Hispanic man who scoured YouTube for reggaeton booty-shaking videos. None of my business, except that he would watch the clips full-screen on the store’s biggest iMac display, the speaker bass thumping while he ground his hips in the approximate space the dancing women’s butts would have occupied if the videos were holograms. Here was the only argument for 3-D that I could respect. On a similar theme, I once overheard a young, broke playboy arranging a booty call on one of the iPhones. Speaking above the store’s iTunes-diverse muzak, he told the girl he was just leaving the studio.

Others conducted important business on the phones, shouting or sobbing or plaintively whispering. Been there, too: The day my MacBook and phone got stolen, I ran to the Geniuses before I thought to run to the cops.

This was the future a lot of dystopian sci-fi authors warned us about, where a private, profit-hungry corporation could make itself feel like Mom’s house.“

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12 Great 2011 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

December 14, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

A bunch of great articles from this year that made me rethink assertions, informed me or entertained me. All available for free.

  • “Getting Bin Laden” (Nicholas Schmidle, New Yorker): The best long-form journalism of the new century. Perfect writing and editing. Will be read with equal fascination 50 years from now.
  • “The Movie Set That Ate Itself,” (Michael Idov, GQ): Intrepid reporter with a deadpan sensibility ventures onto the most insane movie set ever.
  • “Better, Faster. Stronger“ (Rebecca Mead, New Yorker): Wicked portrait of a Silicon Valley self-help guru. Reading this piece is a good way to learn how to write profiles.
  • ‘”The Elusive Big Idea” (Neal Gabler, New York Times): I don’t agree with most of the assertions of this essay, but it’s deeply intelligent and provocative.
  • “Douglas Rushkoff” (Peggy Nelson, HiLowbrow.com): Deep and probing interview with the media ecologist.
  • “Who Invented The Seven-Game Series?“ (Michael Weinreb, Grantland): Reporter asks simple question others gloss over, finds interesting historical and analytical info.
  • “Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead” (Laurie Winer, L.A. Review of Books): Great writing about Sam Zell and the painful decline of the Los Angeles Times.
  • “Show the Monster” (Daniel Zalewski, The New Yorker): Brilliant Guillermo del Toro portrait for fans of film or great writing.
  • “The Man Who Inspired Jobs” (Christopher Bonanos, The New York Times): Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land was oddly omitted from Steve Jobs’ obits, but this lucid, insightful essay remedied that oversight. Better yet: Bonanos is apparently working on a book about Polaroid.
  • “All the Angry People“ (George Packer, The New Yorker): The most revealing reporting yet about the genesis and meaning of Occupy Wall Street.

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“All My Adult Life In New York, Working Simply Meant Paying The Rent And Keeping The Lights On”

May 26, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Bellevue Homeless Shelter, NYC. (Image by Beyond My Ken.)

Longreads pointed me in the direction of an amazing series of articles in Capital about homelessness in NYC during the Bloomberg years, which was written by Steven Boone, a former colleague of mine who was always an excellent writer and person. An excerpt from “Out, But Not Up: Homelessness In The Age Of Bloomberg“:

“Three months later, the last of my small savings ran out, and I went to my landlady in Castle Hill to tell her that I would be leaving at the end of the week, so that she could get a new room renter lined up right away. She asked where I was going. I lied, and told her I would stay with family until I got back on my feet. On Friday, I went to 30th Street Intake Shelter (better known as the Bellevue homeless shelter) for the first time and got assigned to Ready Willing and Able shelter in Brooklyn.

The next morning, I met my father to load his van up with my belongings and store them in an uncle’s garage. He asked me where I was going. I lied again.

This man was 72 years old, living in a small apartment with his wife and supplementing his fixed income by working in a high school cafeteria. All my life, he’d worked seven days a week—six for the U.S. Postal Service, and Sundays cleaning up at a beauty school. (Growing up, I used to be his assistant at the school, paid in movie money and donuts.)

Decades later, I hadn’t managed to do anything to ease his burden. All my adult life in New York, working simply meant paying the rent and keeping the lights on. So, to the extent that I was committed to living, I was committed to making the next transaction between us be a check for some outrageous sum of money, from me to him. If I told him as much, I knew what he would say: ‘Sport, I never cared that you kids would become king of the hill or any kind of bigshot, so long as I raised y’all to be good people in this world. That’s all I ever wanted, and I got what I wanted.’ And in fact that’s how he put it a couple years later, during one of our annual shy, stare-at-the-floor heart-to-hearts.”

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